Usually, nothing extraordinary disrupts the calm in the Ilan County Council building. Commonplace bills are passed and polite questions are posed to the County Magistrate Liu Shou-cheng (劉守成). The two-decade reign of the Democratic Progressive Party in both the county council and county government has left the council's meeting room as tranquil as the paddy fields that surround it.
But now the winds of change are blowing, ruffling both county officials and councilors. With the council scheduled to review a draft resolution on land use control on Oct. 11 and Oct. 12, the peaceful silence is poised to break into a raucous row.
PHOTO: CHIANG YING-YING, TAIPEI TIMES
On Oct. 4, the Ilan County Government rejected the council's draft resolution, which would have removed restrictions on land use, and demanded a review. In the history of local governance, that move was unprecedented. Now, with controversy over the proposal growing, more councilors are expected to oppose the resolution in review, and its future is in doubt.
Since the Law on Local Government Systems (地方制度法) took effect in 1999, no county council before Ilan's had initiated a resolution, nor had a county government proposed a review of the council's self-initiated draft. Ilan, just a small county of 462,000, set the first example pitting the government against the council.
The conflict may be unprecedented, but the economics behind it are hardly news. With the Taipei-Ilan Expressway slated to open by the end of next year councilors' calls for the government to loosen its tight grip on land use have been ceaseless. Some DPP councilors, including Chen Wen-chang (陳文昌) and Wu Fu-tian (吳福田), have urged the government to raise capacity ratios and building coverage ratios on farms dotted by traditional red-brick san ho yuan (三合院), or three-sided houses.
The news of the expressway's progress has fueled a boom in Ilan's property market. From the beginning of May to the end of July, the county sold seventy percent of the areas surrounding county government buildings, and made 135 deals worth a staggering NT$2.6 billion. Most buyers are reportedly from Taipei City, including public figures like Hsu Lu (徐璐), former vice president of the Chinese Television System, and the famed Cloud Gate dancer Lo Man-fei (羅曼菲).
Given Ilan's white-hot real estate market, some deem the capacity ratios and building coverage ratios too low and antiquated. Ilan County's capacity ratio and building coverage ratio remain only roughly half those of national standards enacted by the Ministry of Interior. Higher ratios mean less restrictions on land use
During the last year of former county magistrate and current Premier Yu Shyi-kun's tenure in 1998, restrictions were established to keep out greedy real estate companies and protect the county's verdant land from overdevelopment. But now, Chen and Wu argue that the old standards are blocking Ilan's path to prosperity.
At the review meeting tomorrow and Tuesday, the councilors will be hard-pressed to strike a balance between environmental protection and economic development. But soon, Ilan will have to make a choice.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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